The Phillies injury situation just got some optimistic, if not necessarily good, news.

The MRI that Cole Hamels underwent on Monday revealed inflammation to the posterior of the rotator cuff but no structural damage, per philly.com.

Whew.

As of now, he’s going to skip his start Friday and give the joint some rest, but that’s still positive news considering.

The rest of the rotation should be fine schedule-wise since the extra day off Sunday combined with the scheduled one Monday will allow for some re-shuffling that allows them to stay pretty much on track. Hopefully almost two weeks of rest will give Hamels’ shoulder enough time to bounce back.

The other prominent injury situation, Placido Polanco’s sports hernia, falls into that same optimistic but still not that good category. After further examination, Polanco has been told he can play through the injury and has decided not to have surgery.

“It’s what they think,” Polanco said. “They said I can manage it. I trust them. I’m going to go with that. Surgery is not an option now.”

The downside of electing to avoid surgery for now is that the injury still won’t heal on its own and there’s a chance it could get worse, possibly right as the postseason begins. If he avoids the knife now he’ll still need to do it this offseason no matter what. Having surgery ASAP would likely mean the return of a healthy Polanco to a team with World Series dreams. Of course, it’s easy to discuss surgery as a third party, and there’s always a chance that the recovery period will far exceed the norm, but in Polanco’s case it would seem to make the most sense.

Either way, he’s headed to the disabled list for the short term while he tries to manage through the pain. Polanco took grounders Tuesday but predicted he would need at least five more days to get to a point where he can play again. Polanco can be added to the disabled list retroactively to the last time he played, which was 10 days ago, so he can go on the 15-day version and be eligible to come off after that predicted five-day span.

Regardless though, those five days of extra healing will not do the job surgery could do, but again it’s a very personal decision on his part and it’s a decision that’s pretty tough to question. Hopefully it’s the right one. While Wilson Valdez and Michael Martinez can fill the gap defensively, a veteran leader like Polanco in the lineup can make all the difference in the world when it comes to October.